This invention relates to a processing method of a light-sensitive silver halide photographic material, particularly to a processing method of a light-sensitive silver halide photographic material which is suitable for rapid developing and also high contrast.
In recent years, in the field of making printing photographic plates, color formation and complication of printed matters are under rapid progress. For this reason, demands for improvement of quality and stability of quality are increasing year by year for light-sensitive silver halide photographic materials for printing (hereinafter referred to "printing material") which are intermediate media of printing. In the prior art, processing aptitude for the so-called "lith development" has been imparted to general printing sensitive materials for accomplishing high quality. However, in the "lith development", it is impossible in mechanism to contain sulfite ion which is the preservative at high concentration in the development processing solution, and therefore stability of the developer is very poor, as is well known to those skilled in the art.
As the technique for cancelling instability of "lith development" and also obtaining high contrast image comparable to "lith development" processing, migration to the so-called rapid access developing method can be seen. In this case, for improving contrast, examples of processing light-sensitive materials containing a compound such as tetrazolium with PQ type or MQ type developer containing relatively higher concentrations of sulfites are disclosed in, for example, Japanese Provisional Patent Publications No. 18317/1977, No. 177193/1978, No. 17720/1978, etc. Similarly, as disclosed in Japanese Provisional Patent Publications No. 16623/1978, No. 20921/1978, No. 20922/1978, No. 49429/1978, No. 66731/1978, No. 66732/1978, No. 77616/1978, No. 84714/1978, No. 137133/1978, No. 37732/1979, No. 40629/1979, No. 52050/1980, No. 90940/1980, No. 67843/1981, there have been known the methods to obtain ultra-high contrast negative images by processing a surface latent image type light-sensitive silver halide photographic material containing a hydrazine derivative, particularly a specific acylhydrazine compound added therein with a solution containing 0.15 mole/1 or more of a sulphurous acid preservative at pH 11.0 to 12.3. According to these methods, it has become possible to obtain a hard tone image even by rapid treatment of developing time of 20 seconds to 30 seconds. However, to cope with the increasing information in recent years, the need to deal with the matters within shorter time and yet in larger amount is increasing even for the field of printing, and also the developing time is demanded to be 20 seconds or shorter.
Shortening of developing time will bring about lowering in image density as a matter of course, which may also cause deterioration of image and lowering in sensitivity. Thus, under the present situation, it is very highly required to have a light-sensitive material and processing method which can maintain hard tone and will not cause deterioration of performance by ultra-high speed processing.